Repartings: Poems of Haftara by Joelle Maxx Milman
Repartings: Poems of Haftara by Joelle Maxx Milman
Joelle Milman, who some of the long-time readers of this newsletter may recall, wrote poems to accompany the week’s Haftarah reading while in Israel. I am delighted to announce that these poems have been collected into her debut publication and are on the verge of release through Ben Yehuda Press.
But these poems aren’t completely unaccompanied; they are accompanied by Joelle’s own translation of the Haftarah, and the English and Hebrew stand side-by-side. The poem comes first, and then almost as a response, the translation.
After speaking with Joelle, I learned a few important details about this book. Perhaps the most crucial one is that she has little to no intention to have this be a companion piece to the Torah portion. Rather, the poems and the prophetic readings stand on their own, to be read one after another.
This initial subversion of the religious paradigm leads into another one, namely that the poem precedes the translation, not the other way around — almost making the actual text respond to her, not her responding to the text. (And for those who know me well, I hate the word “text,” but I had no easy shorthand for this.) However, this subversion is no subversion at all: it follows a millennium-old Jewish tradition of poetry that introduces a Torah portion, such as Akdamut on Shavuot amongst Ashkenazis, and the weekly poem Karaites recite before the portion is read that introduces the reading.
For a long time, Joelle had been working in Israel doing Hebrew to English translations for the pro-peace activist group Breaking the Silence. She told me that as a writer, she worried that she was hiding behind translations, letting the words of others do the speaking for her. Here, the poems coming first mean that her voice comes first, and the voice of the Prophets, of God, responds; but because of the ownership she takes in the wording of the translations, it is also the voice of God in how she hears it.
In the 14th century, a new style of Christian polyphonic singing arose, preceding the more commonly known motets of the Renaissance. This was the Ars Nova, which using incredible mathematical precision, employed a Gregorian Chant, slowed down and sung by a bass, and the voice of a countertenor singing over it, at great speeds, resolving together. The slowed chant represented the voice of God, the chant reinterpreted by the greatest minds of Paris, and the quickened, interplaying, response represented the voice of humanity.
This style of music preceded the Renaissance, characterized by the (re)emergence of the individual, as a perspective, as a person who should be named in the creation of art, and not buried behind God, or names of the greats.
1. Guillaume de Machaut - Quant en moy/Amour et biaute/Amara valde (Isorrhythmic motet) 2. Guillaume de Machaut - De bon espoir/Puis que la douce/Speravi (Isorhythmic motet) The Hilliard Ensemble
In a distinctly 21st century form, Joelle recreates this symmetry achieved at select moments in religious art by forming individual characters that experience the content of the prophetic readings as a real person, who is curious, shocked, naive, intense, and breaks the normative taboos, who shocks, who inspires; or sometimes groups of characters who do the same.
To give an example of this interplay, I will sample from her poem 7. Jeremiah 1:1-2:3, which corresponds to the reading for Parshah Pinchus.
these words visions and
I DON’T WANT TO BEAR THEM, I
scream, alone in the hyssops, give
me a friend to share burden to, I’m
overstuffed and the desire is
to dance, and, god, where are the angels,
can they come help me please?
The translation she offers, and specifically the part that this section references, is as follows:
וָאֹמַ֗ר אֲהָהּ֙ אֲדֹנָ֣י יֱהֹוִ֔ה הִנֵּ֥ה לֹֽא־יָדַ֖עְתִּי דַּבֵּ֑ר כִּי־נַ֖עַר אָנֹֽכִי׃ {ס}
And I said:
“Ahh, my G-d! My master!
But — I don’t know how to speak,
for I am just a boy.”
Compare Joelle’s translation to JPS:
I replied:
Ah, my Sovereign GOD!
I don’t know how to speak,
For I am still a boy.
This is one of the closest points in convergence between conventional translation, Joelle’s translation, and her poem. I draw this out only to point out the increase in intensity in her interpretation of Jeremiah’s confrontation with God; she translated the majesty of the JPS translation to a conversational, somewhat hyper-introspective (read: neurotic/real) babbling, to an almost panoptic and immediate vision of the overwhelm described in our theological writings, so that instead of calm analysis we are confronted with the consciousness that she elects to stream into our minds.
The joy in reading the poem before her translation is the realization that the shock of her poetry, whether it be concerning sexuality or violence, is simply the unfiltered leap into the actual prophetic readings. We are forced to process the raw and uncompromising power of the Hebrew, because it is translated not just to English, but to vulnerable and direct dialogues between Joelle and herself, and perhaps God.
An example from the poem Isaiah 66:1-24:
will you fuck me and god
will you be me and god
will your proclamations ever end, and will
we ever fulfill them?
tell me
I forgot the baby tell me
I forgot the maybe I’ll be
sitting here in desperate longing, wet
for god and for all of god and for my body
to stretch the length of god’s
body if only I could ever equal
the promise of Jerusalem
From her translation:
כְּאִ֕ישׁ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אִמּ֖וֹ תְּנַחֲמֶ֑נּוּ כֵּ֤ן אָֽנֹכִי֙ אֲנַ֣חֶמְכֶ֔ם וּבִירוּשָׁלַ֖͏ִם תְּנֻחָֽמוּ׃
כִּי־כֹ֣ה ׀ אָמַ֣ר יְהֹוָ֗ה הִנְנִ֣י נֹטֶֽה־אֵ֠לֶ֠יהָ כְּנָהָ֨ר שָׁל֜וֹם וּכְנַ֧חַל שׁוֹטֵ֛ף כְּב֥וֹד גּוֹיִ֖ם וִֽינַקְתֶּ֑ם עַל־צַד֙ תִּנָּשֵׂ֔אוּ וְעַל־בִּרְכַּ֖יִם תְּשׇׁעֳשָֽׁעוּ׃
For as G-d said:
“Here I am stretching her out like a
spring of peace,
like an overflowing spring, with
respect of the nations
and you will drink from it – you
will suckle from the sides,
and be held up on the knees,
As a man being mothered,
I will comfort you, yes:
I will comfort you,
and in Jerusalem you will be
comforted.
The JPS translation is decidedly less erotic and less judgmental, and perhaps more correct if you are to examine the Hebrew:
For thus said GOD:
I will extend to her
Prosperity like a stream,
The wealth of nations
Like a wadi in flood;
And you shall drink of it.
You shall be carried on shoulders
And dandled upon knees
Like one whom a mother comforts.
So I will comfort you:
You shall find comfort in Jerusalem.
But it doesn’t mean that this is actually correct. Though Joelle points out in her introduction that this is not a scholarly, accurate translation, I must also point out that it is not “wrong” either. And more importantly, it is drawing itself out of the objective “everyone” perspective into her perspective, into her mind, where in a deeper sense, it belongs.
The overwhelm of this more violent, lurid imagery is really only a part of the overall book. It would be greatly unfair to reduce its sophistication to this; there are other themes that emerge: life in Israel as Joelle lives it, with tourists and war; the recurrence of ruach — a force that is God’s but is still not God’s; internal conflicts over religiosity; and others.
In the talk that I did with Joelle a number of years ago, I took the initiative to title it Double Consciousness of Two Prayers. This was based on these lines from her poem Isaiah 54:1-10:
in a straitjacket god insists
she’ll take me back like a lover if
and only if I stay swaddled in
his sapphire thrust but cry! I
want to break these same old binds
double-consciousness of two prayers,
for homeland and without,
for comfort and for storm:
why does god always promise me a baby
I’d rather just god
look at my face again, see
In a distilled sense, these poems and their duality, that is, their pairing with Haftarah sources, expresses a longing to have a relationship with God that is not constrained by the specific constellation of Jewish propheticness, while also even moreso, wishing to weave this propheticness into a higher relationship.
Don’t be fooled by the lightness and indiscretion of the poetry, because this is what props open the door for the honest conversation with God and tradition that Joelle seeks.
Repartings: Poems of Haftara by Joelle Maxx Milman will be available March 17.
